As many of you know I spend far too much time in front of the com­puter.‚ Being the admin on Photography.ca and Pets.ca is a great job and even though I do take pic­tures reg­u­larly, I often go many days with­out shoot­ing and this just has to change.

Three weeks ago I went on a photo tour in the Rock­ies with Dar­win Wiggett who has been inter­viewed on our pod­cast a few times already. Man, that Dar­win Wiggett is inspi­ra­tional and I came back on a photo high. Dar­win has been shoot­ing an image a day for well over a year I believe, and he calls it his daily snap. Here is Darwin’s daily snap for today Decem­ber 3rd 2010.

Although I am envi­ous of Darwin’s pas­sion and com­mit­ment, I know myself pretty well. I’ll try hard to post images that are shot by me and oth­ers, or post vin­tage pho­tog­ra­phy that I dig. I’ll even write a few lines about what intrigues me about the images. I should be able to do this sev­eral times a week each week — but not every sin­gle day. Any­way, effec­tive imme­di­ately and thanks again Dar­win for your addi­tional inspi­ra­tion, I’ll start post­ing pho­tos of the day as often as I can.

Here’s an image I shot just yes­ter­day a few meters from my home. The day was very over­cast and windy and pud­dles reflect­ing the city were every­where. The wind caused rip­ples in the water and gave it a painterly feel which caught my eye imme­di­ately. Because the scene already had very lit­tle colour I thought it best to con­vert it to BW using Sil­ver efex pro. Although the shot does feel a bit ‘dark’ to my eye, it did rep­re­sent the mood of the day and the chang­ing sea­sons. Please feel free to cri­tique or com­ment on any aspect of this image.

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #49 dis­cusses dodg­ing and burn­ing your pho­tographs. Dodg­ing means mak­ing parts of a photo lighter and burn­ing in makes parts of your pho­to­graph darker. Almost ALL pho­tographs require some dodg­ing and burn­ing. The images below by Yise­haq are great exam­ples. Look how much more alive image 2 looks after some dodg­ing and burning.

In terms of the actual tech­niques used to dodge and burn a photo you can try this one if you have Pho­to­shop. Cre­ate a new layer and set your blend­ing mode to soft-light or over­lay. Use an opac­ity of around 4–15%. Use a SOFT paint brush with these set­tings. To burn (darken) use black as the fore­ground colour in the palette. To dodge (lighten) use white as the fore­ground colour.

This pod­cast was inspired by Yise­haq a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum. Feel free to join — it’s fun and free! This pod­cast was recorded in a park. Please let me know if you found the ambi­ent noises too distracting.

Many thanks to Yise­haq for let­ting me use the above images of the Blue Nile as a teach­ing tool!

Post edited August 18 2008 — Adding 2 of my own images to fur­ther illus­trate the dif­fer­ence between the image after it comes out of the cam­era ver­sus the dodged and burned result. The result looks much live­lier and the main rea­son is the local dodg­ing and burn­ing. These are of the grand canyon and they are the same images from the pod­cast on delib­er­ately under­ex­pos­ing your images.

Image 1 of the Grand Canyon (leveling/quick colour balance)

Image 2 — after includ­ing quite a bit of dodg­ing and burn­ing and a quick sharpen.
After a while you’ll learn to see the poten­tial tones just wait­ing to come out.

I recently moved into one of the best parts of Mon­treal called Plateau Mont –Royal AKA The Plateau or Le Plateau. There are so many inter­est­ing peo­ple in this bustling and artsy part of town that I think I may start a new series of casual ‘street’ por­traits just for fun.

Yes­ter­day as I walked through my new favourite loca­tion (Parc Lafontaine), I spot­ted 2 lovers in a ham­mock and asked if I could take their por­trait. They agreed and I think I cap­tured the feel­ings they have for one another. This was shot at about 6pm with no flash or reflec­tor, only ambi­ent light.